But it has evolved into a network of online student papers across
the country, with over 40 university specific websites across
Britain. The Tab's sites got 10 million hits and had 3 million
readers in November, according to executive editor Joshi
Herrmann.

The Tab raised the $3 million funding, its first round, from top
London-based tech venture capital fund Balderton Capital, which
has in the past backed the likes of Betfair, Citymapper,
Lovefilm, and Bebo.

Herrmann told Business Insider: "The Tab is now a platform across
the US, the UK, and Canada that gives an opportunity for the best
young journalists to write and report their world. It started as
a student newspaper website and it's now moving much more towards
being a tech-driven platform."

The site is run by teams of between 12 to 40 students on the
ground with a larger pool of more casual contributors. 2,650
students have written for the publisher this year.

Herrmann says: "In the last 2 months we've activated a new bit of
our product that means you sign up on our sign up page and you
immediately go into a live chat with an editor in New York or
London.

"They commission you to write a piece after having talked to you
and then your log in goes straight into WordPress and you can
write it straight away with your editors notes in the margin.
We're encouraging a system somewhere between social media and
traditional media."

The Tab's website this
morning.Screenshot

Balderton partner Suranga Chandratillake says in an emailed
statement: "The Tab is a technology­ powered cultural phenomenon.
The team has built a unique way to scale authentic, engaging
grassroots journalism across the UK and has shown that the same
model works in the US too."

None of the student contributors are paid, keeping The Tab's cost
base down. So what's in it for them? Herrmann says: "What's in it
for the students is if they want to be writers or reporters or
even people who want to go into marketing or PR, the strength
of The Tab is we've got a team of editors and writers and
tech people who can support them and give them really good advice
and really good practice."

Herrmann himself began at the Cambridge Tab before becoming a
staff writer at the Evening Standard. He says: "It's a
really good first platform. We've become the way of
entering this pretty tricky industry in the UK. Three of the four
of this year's Telegragh graduates are Tab editors.

"What's in it for thousands of others who don't want to be in the
media is more fun. They might not write as often but they might
write occasionally something they find entertaining."

The Tab plans to use the $3 million to expand across America. The
company opened an office in New York in September and already has
25 regional university sites. Many of its stories have also
gained national attention, such as its
coverage of US campus protests in November.

Herrmann says The Tab is also seeing lots of students signing up
at US universities where it isn't present, and this will drive
its expansion plans.

He says: "We had people signing up at Ohio State and there wasn't
a Tab there. We just decided to make a domain, put those things
on there and start promoting there. We started launching there
because there was local enthusiasm there, we don't need to go
there and have a big expensive launch."

He adds: "A big part of our business is that our engagement is
really strong. We have places where 5x as many devices as there
are people at the university are reading us over a month. We have
this hyper-engagement because we're local and we're tying to do
stuff that is original and local."